by Dan Stout
19
THAT MORNING THE BUNKER’S DATA lab was empty except for myself and Trevor, and I blamed my discomfort on the company and my surroundings in equal measure. The data lab was designed by data experts who had apparently never seen a human in person. Judging by the dim lighting and constant need to crouch, I doubted if they were even Mollenkampi or Squib. It seemed more likely they were from one of the non-bipedal Families, maybe a multisegmented Haabe-Ieath who’d gone their entire life without understanding sunlight or how a decent chair was supposed to work.
And that chair was where I’d be spending my workday. I’d moved past lugging data tapes around and on to actual data entry. Trevor insisted on explaining the programming behind NICI, expounding on the joys of Formula Transmission, Expression, And Notation. “It’s all about FORTEAN, bud!” he’d shout, and run a palm over his smooth green head.
The big Gillmyn had muscles on muscles, but his near-sightedness meant that he frequently leaned his bulk over my shoulder, squinting through soda-bottle glasses to identify each error I created while entering the cases. Which was often. The lab’s flickering fluorescent tubes made the NICI terminal screen’s dark green letters blend in even more with the light green background. About the size of a paperback novel, the screen was marred by a ceaselessly rolling horizontal line that broke my concentration every time I thought I was about to understand something.
Halfway through the morning, even Trevor’s enthusiasm seemed to be running thin.
“Okay, bud,” he said with an annoyed burble. “I need to stretch my legs. You flip through these cases,” he dropped a heavy cardboard box at my feet, “and think about how you’ll classify them, but don’t actually do any data entry, okay? We’ll regroup for another session and talk our way through it.”
“Alright,” I said. “Have a good walk.”
“Roger that. You be ready for a quiz when T-Bone gets back!”
He slapped the top of the doorframe on his way out of the lab, breaking into a light jog while he was still in the hallway. His departure provided me with two things: a few minutes to myself, and a deep conviction that I would rather take a bullet than refer to him as “T-Bone.”
I lifted a file from the front of the box he’d left in my care. It was the first of several auto theft cases. There was quite a backlog to enter, as violent crimes were NICI’s priority. The National Index of Criminal Investigations was an attempt to put a stop to the bad old days when criminals could leave a trail of bodies in one city-state, then pick up and start fresh in another.
The idea of starting fresh had more than a little appeal at the moment. I had not only managed to fail to connect with Gellica, I’d blown up whatever remained of the relationship just as surely as Paulus’s strange air creature had burst the candle holders to explode at Tenebrae’s fundraiser. The corporate sorcerer had covered with an obvious lie, blaming the event on an overheated candle. Had he simply been trying to calm the crowd, or was he hiding something deeper? The thought brought me around to my own secret. I knew I couldn’t continue to ignore the cobwebs. I’d encountered them multiple times, and the sooner I addressed them, the better.
I pushed the car thefts to the back of the box, hoping to find a case to enter that wouldn’t put me to sleep, as I ran over the possible explanations I’d identified.
One: I was crazy.
Two: I was experiencing some kind of intermittent physical sensation, probably related to the violent removal of my fingers.
Three: I was somehow interacting with magic.
I didn’t want the answer to be option one, and Doc Mumphrey had cast doubt on option two. But if I considered option three, that I was interacting with magic, then I had some serious logic issues to deal with. Why was it sometimes more intense than others? Why did it bring cold darkness, and a roaring in my ears? And most of all, why didn’t it happen around objects I knew were magical, such as Guyer’s cloak, Paulus’s tattoos, or even Gellica in her entirety?
The next batch of files rustled under my fingers. I pulled one out and glanced over the details. A summary of muggings in the Old Orchard neighborhood—they went to the back of the box as well.
No, if I truly was interacting with magic, then it only made sense for the cobwebs and tingling to be present whenever I was around manna. The fact that it wasn’t indicated there had to be a simpler, more mundane answer, like Jax’s theory about the adrenaline-fueled strength of a drug addict.
I leaned back, temporarily abandoning the box of files and the whole concept of data entry.
If it wasn’t magic, what did that leave as far as options? A long talk with the department shrinks? Hardly. At best I’d be taken off of Homicide, and relegated to a lifetime in the data lab with Trevor. And if there was a physical cause I’d likely end up under Dr. Baelen’s loving care, waiting to be probed and dissected like Cetus St. Beisht, the dismembered mobster at the heart of Dungan’s investigation.
I paused. Dungan had said that St. Beisht had given them the slip, and they knew he was dead after they’d found his car.
Flipping the box around, I returned to the car thefts. There were even more than I’d first thought. Luckily, the one I wanted would be recent. If they’d found St. Beisht’s car, then there was a chance it had been reported missing.
A few minutes and a half-dozen papercuts later, I’d found what I was looking for. A write-up on a stolen vehicle, the owner listed as Cetus St. Beisht. And it had a case number override code, folding it into an open OCU investigation.
I considered this. Individual open cases could be masked from interdepartmental searches; this was needed to keep sensitive details restricted and confidential. So Dungan could block me—or anyone in the TPD—from digging into his case. But he might not have anticipated an overeager OCU data clerk. If details had been entered on the basic case, NICI might give me a way in.
I entered the emulator mode, making it appear to NICI that I was an investigator searching from Norgaerev. It was how Trevor had taught me to verify the cases I’d entered. But now I was using it to see if Dungan had let his guard down. I waited as NICI pondered my request, each scroll of the green horizontal line twisting my gut a little more. Finally it came up: an open case on a male Gillmyn, found dismembered four days ago. For more information contact Detective Dungan. But it also had a few more details: The nature of the crime was described, as well as the types of physical evidence, including the body, a washing machine . . . and a surveillance tape.
That son of a bitch! I leaned back, hands balled into fists. I’d had suspicions before, but this was incontrovertible. I logged out of the emulator and jotted a note to Trevor, telling him I’d be out that afternoon. I wasn’t sure why Dungan had lied, or what else he’d covered up, but there was no way in all the Hells that I’d spend the rest of the day behind a terminal.
* * *
Jax responded to my page, and we met up a block from the Bunker, down the street from the food trucks shilling their fried delicacies to cops and civilians who craved a hot meal. Ajax had already gotten food, and we stood near the Hasam, as I agitatedly paced back and forth while waves of pedestrians rolled past us.
“We gotta see that video,” I said.
Jax spread his hands, one empty, the other holding a sandwich. He’d already listened to a string of obscenities and vitriol I directed at the non-present Dungan, and even his patience was wearing thin. “I agree. You want to sneak into the OCU office and swipe it? Because I don’t think that’s going to end well for either of us.”
I paced a tight circle, trying to walk off some of my frustration, when a trio of teens pushed between us, decked out in leather and chains. Their costumes and strut were an advertisement, displaying their anger like a warning, doing their best to not be hassled by someone else. After all, warnings only dissuade if they’re visible. As I watched them walk away I felt a memory jog loose.
“Do
you remember,” I said, “how well the security camera was hidden. Tucked away behind the streetlight?”
Jax bit into his sandwich and gave it a dubious look. “I do. What about it?”
“Anyone who hides a camera like that is hoping to record activity, not prevent it.”
“I think that’s what I said at the time.” Jax poked around in the to-go bag. “Did we not get any extra hot and sour sauce?”
“Tell me something,” I said. “Do you think anyone who wants a secret recording that badly would give up their only copy of the video?”
Jax paused, then rubbed a thumb along one mandible, considering. I flashed him a grin.
“Whaddya say we pay a visit to the super at 5150 Ringsridge Road?”
He nodded, and I opened the passenger door.
“Good. Let’s keep this between us right now. After the video and what Mumphrey said . . .” I trailed off, letting my words drown in the buzz of traffic and the conversations of strangers as the flow of pedestrians marched by. There really wasn’t anything to add.
20
THE LOBBY OF 5150 LISTED the building superintendent’s name as Walter Williamson. I ran a finger down the building directory. No Williamson on display. As I looked a second time, a tenant passed us on the way to check his mail. I badged him and asked where the super’s apartment was.
“Oh.” Behind a pair of fashionable glasses, his eyes darted from Jax’s face to my badge and back. Mandibles working, the tenant said, “You want Harold. 1C.”
I glanced at the directory. 1C was H. Frazier. The fact that he lived on the first floor was a sign he had a sweetheart deal with the landlord. In most of the city the lower levels were more desirable, as the warm air from the thermal vents didn’t rise as well to higher levels without expensive fan assists.
“But he’s not home.” The guy shifted in his oversized sweater as he collected his daily ration of bills and ad fliers from the mailbox. “I passed him earlier, on the way up to Miss Esterhaus’s unit. 4G.”
A few flights of stairs later, we knocked on apartment 4G. The door opened a crack, and an older human woman eyed us through the links of the door chain. “Yeah?”
It was Jax’s turn to show his badge, and it gained us slightly more grudging cooperation than shown by the tenant in the entry.
“We’re looking for Harold Frazier,” I said.
“Hang on.” The woman closed the door, then opened it fully, calling out, “Harold, there’s police here for you!” To us, she added, “He’s in the kitchen.”
Harold was, indeed, in the kitchen. Specifically, he was under the kitchen sink, a pair of brown slacks and a curved belly sticking out from under a faded blue-and-white-striped shirt.
“Titanshade PD, Mister Frazier,” I announced. “We need a minute of your time.”
“I’m in the middle of somethin’,” he said. “Come back in an hour.” The drainpipe under the sink was open, and Frazier fought to feed a slender metal wire into its depths. I’d once seen my own super do something similar in order to break up a clog in my bathroom sink.
“It’s about the camera in the alley,” I said.
Frazier twisted, revealing the edge of his head, one eye visible between corroded metal pipes as he looked me over. “What about it?”
“We believe it may have captured something connected to the death in the alley.”
He snorted. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. It was the laundry room. The other cop at least knew where the body was.”
Jane’s death hadn’t even registered for this man. “The last cop,” I said. “You remember a name?”
“Dun-something. Dunwich, maybe?”
Close enough. I exchanged a look with Jax. What did this guy capture that Dungan didn’t want us to see?
“The camera’s hidden,” I said. “Why’s that?”
“It’s there to catch the sneakers,” he said. “Comin’ in and out by the fire escape.”
“Sneakers?”
“Subletters!” he roared, underscoring the word with a metallic whack on the pipes. “Renting out cots to people who ain’t on the lease, not paying the additional rent. They know they can’t come and go through the front door, so they sneak in and out by the fire escape. Filthy animals.”
“They got rights, too!” Miss Esterhaus’s voice crackled from the kitchen doorway.
“Yeah, yeah, they got rights,” Frazier responded while the metal clanking continued. “They got rights to use more water than the rest of us, to need more maintenance than the rest of us. They oughta be paying more rent than the rest of us, too!”
“Alright,” I said, interrupting him before he could slip into a full tirade. “So you installed a camera where it wouldn’t be seen. What were you going to do with the video?”
“Imp’s tits,” muttered Frazier. “This snake won’t go anywhere.” He pulled the flexible metal cable out of the drain, getting viscous black gunk on the inside of Esterhaus’s cabinet.
“You’re gonna clean all that up, Harold!” She still perched in the doorway.
“The video?” I reminded him of the topic at hand.
“It’s for the lawyer. The landlord’s got a lawyer working on evicting the deadbeats.”
“And you’d never give away your only copy,” I said. “Not when you’re trying to get rid of your sneakers.”
“Course not,” he snapped, snaking the cable back into the drain. “Lawyer’s got a copy of everything. That’s the whole point, ain’t it?”
“We’re gonna need you to contact your attorney,” I said. “Let ’em know to give us a copy of that tape.”
“I’m occupied,” Frazier said, and rapped the pipes again. “And I already gave you a copy.”
“No, you gave a copy to the officer investigating your dead body in the wash,” I said. “We’re investigating the dead body in the alley. You don’t want to cooperate? That’s fine. But our next step is to turn the investigation onto maintenance people who keep having bodies appear around them.”
The sound of struggle from under the sink ceased.
“Fine,” said Frazier. “I’ll call him after I’m done here.”
“There’s a phone right here.” I pointed at a light green wall-mounted unit with a heavily tangled cord. “I’m sure Miss Esterhaus would be okay with you using it.”
“As long as it’s not long distance,” she called from the doorway. “The prices they charge are unbelievable!”
“Can’t stop when I’m half done,” Frazier muttered. “Gotta find this clog and put it all back together.”
Jax moved across the tiny kitchen, closer to the super. “The drain connects to the next-door unit.”
“Course it does. So?”
“So if the snake’s feeding too far, it’s probably because the junction is a T, rather than a Y.” Jax drew the capital letters in the air as Frazier stared at him from under the sink. “With a T junction, you’re pushing through into the unit next door and spinning the snake around their sink.” He clacked his jaws at the mess inside the cabinet. “Probably oughta clean up their place, as well.”
Frazier glared at the pipes as if they’d personally insulted him.
“I’d guess someone repaired it a while back,” said Jax, “but they used the wrong junction.” He didn’t bother to point out that the most likely someone was currently lying under the sink. “You can cut out the junction and replace it, or try using a heavier bit on the snake to help it drop down instead of pushing through.”
I looked at him with eyebrows raised.
“My parents owned a rental,” he said. “I picked up a few things.”
Two steps took me to the phone. I untangled the cord and handed the receiver to Frazier. “My partner just saved you a couple hours’ work. You can say thanks by calling that lawyer.”
* * *
/> After a trip to the landlord’s lawyer and an interminable wait in the lobby while they made a copy of the tape, we were back at the Bunker, having requisitioned a video machine from the tech room. We rolled the AV cart inside one of the meeting rooms, thinking that a bit of privacy might be required. We’d damn near had to take out a mortgage to get the video player. The technology was amazing, but the TPD administration watched their use like hawks.
The top of the player opened up, and we inserted the copy of Frazier’s tape from last Friday evening. Then we took our seats and hit Play.
The video had no sound, and captured images in short bursts when its sensor detected movement. It had a good view of the hinged fire escape stairs, and being behind the streetlight meant that the view was well lit and clear. Frazier had placed his camera well for his purposes, but not for ours—the street level alleyway wasn’t visible.
For the first couple hours, there wasn’t much to see, other than the occasional coming and going of tenants, the “sneakers” that Frazier had been so determined to gain his fair rent from. At the three-hour mark, there was movement at the bottom edge of the screen. I leaned forward, waiting. Then a young Mollenkampi woman with vibrant red and orange head plates climbed into the view. Jane, alive and full of energy.
She was practically bouncing as she paced back and forth on a platform of some kind.
Jax leaned forward. “Is she standing on something?”
“The dumpster,” I whispered. “She’s pushed the dumpster back to the wall.”
He clicked a note of agreement as Jane pulled out a wide piece of chalk and began laying out her mural design, nodding her head to the sound of some internal rhythm. Her vitality came through even in grainy still images on a security camera.
Jax stirred. “Why wouldn’t Dungan want us to see this?”
I didn’t answer, unable to take my eyes off Jane, knowing that she was doomed, and there was nothing I could do about it.